Rain sees Ryder Cup schedule change

The Ryder Cup schedule has been altered by tournament officials following Friday's rain delay of more than seven hours at Celtic Manor in South Wales.

In order to try to finish to planned on Sunday evening, the second session of play will now compromise six foursome matches instead of the usual four, meaning all 12 players on both sides will be involved.

The third session of play will then comprise two foursome and four fourball matches with the standard 12 singles matches to follow.

European Tour chief executive George O'Grady said: "This all depends on the sky, we don't have a good forecast for Sunday but they are not always accurate, and if that happens we will then roll into Monday, keeping the singles sacrosanct whatever happens."

The new schedule still means a total of 28 points will be available, with eight decided by foursomes and eight by fourballs as usual.

O'Grady added: "I congratulate the captains on taking this groundbreaking step. We feel it's our obligation to do everything we can, while maintaining the integrity of the match, to finish on Sunday.

"We considered a lot of things. The easy thing was to scrap one session but we wanted to maintain the 28-point format and felt this was a way to keep it on track.

"The players agreed to this without huge convincing. They can see it's a slight change of the schedule but we preserve 28pts and we have options now to definitely get in by Monday night."